1 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TEACHING AND LEARNING INCULT 2014 GRAND BLUEWAVE, SHAH ALAM 2-3 DISEMBER 2014 Assessing Cognitive Abilities In Learning Genetics Among Biology Matriculation Students Nurshamshida Md Shamsudin Nurizatul Hidayah Biology Education, Science Education Dept Universiti Teknologi MARA Abstract Tremendous changes of science education in Malaysia have given a lot of implication especially towards teaching and learning of science subject. For Biology, decreasing of the student’s enrollment in IHL recently are critical. Research show that students could not see any relevant of taking science to further their study in IHL in order to prepare them to enter the job market. To add, achievements of science students in Matriculation are also alarming due to the low abilities of cognitive understanding for science subjects that involve abstract, conceptual and unseen entities to be grasp easily. Study aims to identify what are the levels of matriculation students understanding in Genetics and constrain in learning of Genetics effectively. Survey and interview were deployed to 180 matriculation students however returns of questionnaire were only 76. Findings show that the matriculation students still struggle at the level of conceptual understanding even though Genetics has been introduced from the school level. Furthermore aspects of language, learning strategies were also identified as elements that distracting students ability to understand Genetics well. Keywords: Biology, cognitive, learning Genetics Introduction In line with vision 2020, science education in Malaysia formulated to produce dynamic citizen which competent in utilizing knowledge. The development of science education in Malaysia since independence to present has significant impact to Malaysia education system. In fulfilling the vision of National Science Education Philosophy, there are